1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information recording/reproducing apparatus for reproducing program information recorded on a first recording medium and recording program information on a second recording medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
There is an information recording/reproducing apparatus for reproducing and recording program information in which the program information recorded on a CD (Compact Disc), for example, is reproduced, and recorded on a hard disk, and the recorded program information is read and reproduced from the hard disk.
The hard disk records information compressed by compression methods, including the MP3 (MPEG: Moving Picture Experts Group; Audio Layer III) and the ATRAC3 that is improved from the ATRAC (Adaptive Transform Acoustic Coding).
For instance, in a case where music information to be played for one minute is compressed and recorded on the hard disk, the recodable size of the hard disk amounts to about 1M bytes. Supposing that the hard disk has a storage capacity of about 10G bytes, 2000 pieces of music can be recorded if the playback time of one piece of music is five minutes.
In this way, the hard disk can store more program information than the CD. Also, the access speed in reproducing the program information recorded on the hard disk is faster than in reproducing the program information recorded on the CD, and the hard disk can be recovered from the external vibration more rapidly, whereby the hard disk provides many advantages over the CD player for reproducing the program information recorded on the CD. Therefore, there is a trend for developing a market for the information recording/reproducing apparatus with the hard disk, which is mainly mounted on the vehicle.
By the way, in the information recording/reproducing apparatus with the hard disk, in order to reproduce the program information recorded on the CD while recording it efficiently on the hard disk, there has been a proposal of automatically recording the program information on the hard disk, without the user operating a recording mode provided on an operation panel. Namely, it is possible to effect the efficient recording in which a library is automatically created on the hard disk only by reproducing the program information recorded on the CD, without regard to a user""s will to record the program information.
However, in the information recording/reproducing apparatus which is mounted on the vehicle, for example, if the driver stops the engine to get off the car in course of reproducing the program information recorded on the CD, the supply of electric power to the apparatus is cut out, whereby the reproducing operation and the recording operation on the hard disk are interrupted. Thereby, the program information may not be fully recorded to the end of data at the time of interrupt.
If the user extracts the CD out of the apparatus main body to exchange the CD in course of reproducing the program information recorded on the CD, the reproducing/recording operation is interrupted, whereby the program information may not be fully recorded to the end of data at the time of interrupt. Moreover, when the exchanged CD is inserted into the apparatus main body, and reproduced, the program information that is different from the program information reproduced before may be reproduced, possibly resulting in a situation that the different program information may be recorded in a recording area next to that of the program information recorded halfway.
In this manner, if a library is created automatically on the hard disk only by reproducing the program information recorded on the CD, without regard to a user""s will, various events may possibly occur, thereby bringing about the above trouble.
The present invention has been achieved in the light of the above-mentioned problems, and it is an object of the invention to provide an information recording/reproducing apparatus in which the program information recorded on a first recording medium (e.g., a CD) is reproduced and automatically recorded on a second recording medium (e.g., a hard disk), without regard to a user""s will, and the program information that is not fully recorded to the end of data upon an event of interrupting the reproducing/recording operation is deleted, thereby making the effective use of a recording area of the second recording medium.
In order to accomplish the above object, according to the present invention, there is provided an information recording/reproducing apparatus for reproducing program information recorded on a first recording medium and recording the reproduced program information on a second recording medium, comprising reproducing means for reproducing the program information recorded on the first recording medium, recording means for recording the program information reproduced by the reproducing means on the second recording medium, deletion means for deleting the program information recorded on the second recording medium, and control means for controlling the reproducing means and the recording means to perform the parallel processings of recording the program information on the second recording medium and reproducing the program information from the first recording medium, characterized in that the control means controls the deletion means to delete automatically the program information that is not completely recorded at the time when an event occurs of interrupting the reproducing/recording operation while reproducing and recording the program information by the reproducing means and the recording means.
The control means controls the deletion means to delete automatically the program information that is not completely recorded on the second recording medium, when the supply of electric power to at least one of the reproducing means and the recording means is cut out.
Also, the control means controls the reproducing/recording operation to be resumed from the top position of the program information that is automatically deleted, when the event of interrupting the reproducing/recording operation is resolved.
With the information recording/reproducing apparatus of the invention as constituted in the above way, the program information recorded on the first recording medium is reproduced by the reproducing means, and in parallel, the reproduced program information is recorded on the second recording medium by the recording means, without regard to a user""s will. Also, when an event of interrupting the reproducing and recording operation occurs, such as when the supply of electric power is cut out during the reproducing and recording operation, the program information recorded halfway that is not completely recorded to the end of data is automatically deleted. And when the event is resolved, the reproducing and recording operation is resumed from the top position of the automatically deleted program information.
Thereby, the reproducing and recording operation is performed without regard to a user""s will. Even if the event of interrupting the operation during the recording operation, the program information recorded halfway on the second recording medium is automatically deleted, thereby making the effective use of the recording area of the second recording medium. Also, even if the event is resolved, and the automatically deleted program information is reproduced again, the reproducing and recording operation is performed from its top position, whereby the program information can be recorded continuously and with high accuracy.